Discussion (26) ¬

What an astoundingly honest virus! It stuck to it’s end of the bargain! Let’s hope it never grows smart enough to consider the concept of deceit (or renegotiation…)

And then, we’re back to saving Rikk. I thought Voltritis was going to lend a hand curing Worthington Syndrome, either by curb-stomping the pathogen agent inside Rikk, or by infecting enough people in order to increase it’s intelligence to a superhuman level, thus becoming able to come up with a vaccine/treatment/cure that human researchers can’t think of. Oh, well.

I guess the guys are going to try Animal’s blood now. Miniaturization (a la Fantastic Voyage) could also be an answer, if the blood fails. And, if I were Ally or Rumy, I would at least try to convince Jared to hand over the 23-sider, if everything else fails.

…the 23-sider? You’re kidding, right mobius? I don’t think they’re going to use the thing that almost destroyed the world to cure Rikk. Really don’t think any of them are deluded enough to think that’d be safe.

Aydr, if someone you love is about to die, you’ll try _everything_ within your reach to save him/her – and with the 23-sider, that reach could be infinite. I do remember the inherent danger that the 23-sider represents. I know there’s plenty of good reasons for not using it (just ask Zaha). That’s why I mentioned it as a last resort. But even if Rikk has accepted his imminent death, that doesn’t mean all the people he reached out during his short life have to do the same.

As I commented on the first strip of The End of Infinity, you will have a reaaally tough time justifying the dead of a character in a story where the means for bringing the dead back to life exists and have in fact been used before. Yes, maybe you can rule them out one by one, but every time a fantastical or technological marvel fails to save that character makes it that much harder to justify why the next one also fails.

Having a character die from a disease that has been cured in the past makes that death even harder to accept – and not only for us, the readers, but for the characters also. And when you know there’s a thing that can bend reality to your liking, well, that death becomes not only hard to accept, but intolerable.

I don’t know if this is who Moebius (awesome name, by the way) was thinking of, but in the team’s first encounter with the “Hand of Justice”, Baxter used Animal’s blood to heal Di from highly fatal injuries that Animal himself had dealt her…fatal enough that it’s entirely possible she was dead for at a least a second there.

This comic portrays death far more seriously than, say, a DC or Marvel title, (it’s unlikely that we’ll see someone being resurrected because some jerk is punching reality in the face here), but consider this strip. Also, consider that a group of people from the future traveled to the present because they (allegedly) want to prevent a lot of deaths and suffering that already happened (in their timeline, at least).

@Platonix

Thanks! Yes, there you have another example of a character using a 1-UP

I’d definitely have to disagree with both those examples. Being healed of terrible wounds at the brink of death is not the same as being brought back FROM the dead. Death does not occur when your breathing stops. (This is why Buffy’s first ‘death’ bugged me so much.) Your heart can even stop, but death does not occur until brain activity ceases.
And nowhere in Fans (that I can think of) has anyone been actually brought back to life after their brain has stopped working. I think Campbell has actually been very careful about this (or very lucky? Or I’m wrong?).

That’s one boundary we’ve never crossed. I’m extremely aware that if you make death a revolving door, you kill a lot of opportunities for real suspense. And sure, you can do like Buffy or Guilded Age and say “well, you can only resurrect from death if the circumstances are juuuust right, like using a Groupon discount.” But Fans is so unbounded in most ways, I feel like that’s a can of worms.

I really don’t think that Ally or Rumy would be irresponsible enough to try the 23-sider. They are both acutely aware that no matter how much they love Rikk and no matter how clearly saving him is their deepest desire, they are not pure enough to use that thing. These are two women who have had MAJOR struggles with their inner darkness.

It’s not totally up to them, either. Now that it’s understood what the 23-Sider can do, even in the hands of an essentially moral and upstanding person, it’s a lot more secure than it was when Jones was just toying around with it.

Even AEGIS personnel don’t have clearance to access it without direct authorization from Jared, the President and the Secretary of Defense. Rumy and Ally don’t even know where it is.